Work Protective Gear – the Basic Pieces and Their Features

Buying safety gear may seem pretty straightforward – what you want to protect is what you should get, right? Well, often times this is easier said than done. In today’s day and age, there’s a variety of different options that come with every protective gear, which may be overwhelming for someone who’s shopping for these products for the first time. The truth of the matter is, all pieces of safety gear come with different designs, features, and functions. Let’s start talking details and get deeper into this matter.

Goggles

Safety glasses, or in this case goggles, more than any other piece give you a lot of choices regarding their lenses. Just visit any reliable online safety shop Australia wide and you will come across a huge variety of protective goggles. They can have clear lenses, polarized lenses, lenses that block infrared light, mirrored lenses, anti-fog lenses that can also provide side protection as well as orange lenses for high contrast and image resolution in low light conditions.

Safety shops also offer goggles with light-blue tinted lenses, designed for environments with high levels of sodium vapor, glare and yellow lightning which are a common sight in the semiconductor industry and within food processing plants. There are also goggles that are meant to be used both indoors and outdoors, with lenses that are light enough to wear them inside and dark enough to wear them outside. All this is thanks to the light grey tint which makes them ideal for people who frequently switch work environments. Some of them also offer amber lens goggles, which are similar to the ones with orange lenses, but instead, they offer an enhanced contrast, especially in hazy conditions and on overcast days.

Headwear

There are two ways you can go about getting protective gear for your head – you either get yourself a bump hat or a hard hat. Bump hats are simple and they offer excellent protection against accidental impacts from pipes or beams and they are best suited for areas where there are low overhead hazards. Unlike bump hats, hard hats have ANSI standard which determines what class and type of hats serve which purpose. There are two types of hard hats, the first (Type I) helps reduce the impact from blows on the top of the head. The more protective (Type II) is intended to reduce the effect of bigger impacts, on the side, off-center and on the top of the head.

Hearing

There is quite a wide range of protective hearing gear you can find in most safety shop Australia wide – from cheaper models to ones specifically made to fit a person’s ear canals. Wax balls and foam earplugs have similar features, their only differences lie in their form and price. Wax balls are slightly more expensive than earplugs but they are still cheap enough.

Earmuffs come in various models and can be attached to safety masks. They cover the ear completely and can’t cause irritation in the inside, However, this may happen on the outside part around the ear, usually in warm weather – depending on the material that they are made of. Silicon and universal ear plugs are quite popular nowadays, especially universal plugs as they completely seal off the auditory canal and provide the user with a filter system that gives them control over the muffling. On the other hand, silicon plugs are meant for single use and may fall off.

Heat Resistant Clothing

Flame (heat) resistant clothing has two types of protection. Primary protection one is meant to protect the wearer while being exposed to open flames, molten substance splashes, and potential radiant heat. Secondary protection clothing is designed to protect the wearer from exposure to intermittent hazards, while it can also protect from flames, heat and molten splash. It is generally meant to be used when there isn’t a constant danger.

This type of clothing is usually made of three materials, which are sometimes used separately and sometimes together. The first and most common one is modacrylic which is made of a blend of several different types of flame-resistant fibres. Nomex fibres are usually standalone when it comes to garments, but the option for a fibre combination is not excluded either. The last but not least are kevlar fibres which are very strong and are often combined with Nomex, which results in a solid flame-resistant but heavy clothing.

Gloves

Today there are gloves meant for different uses made from all sorts of materials. Your basic cotton-made glove will be enough to protect you from abrasions but they won’t protect you from sharp and rough objects. Kevlar gloves, on the other hand, will protect you and they are also a good option for extreme heat and cold.

Leather and aluminized gloves are good for welding, with the former being used against cuts and abrasions, and the latter providing a good reflective and insulating protection in furnace and foundry work. Rubber, plastic and synthetic gloves can provide protection from solvents, oils, and chemicals. The same goes for the stronger coated fabric gloves, plus, they can handle moderately concentrated chemicals used in laboratories.